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Andrew Yang’s 2020 presidential campaign was based on a warning that automation and AI would hollow out the labor market and concentrate wealth in the hands of a few. At the time, ideas like Universal Basic Income felt fringe. Now Dario Amodei, Sam Altman, and Bernie Sanders are all saying versions of the same thing.
An entrepreneur at heart, Yang has found a new way to put money back into the hands of the people — one phone bill at a time. On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan talks to Yang about his startup Noble Mobile, which pays you to use your phone less, ways to combat the “attention economy,” and what startups can do when the government won’t move.
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Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:15 Being right about AI and jobs (unfortunately)
02:09 Noble Mobile and getting paid to touch grass
07:36 Using market incentives instead of dark patterns
10:01 Growth, revenue, and the Mint Mobile comparison
12:28 Dumb phones, offline parties, and fighting the attention economy
18:29 The state of UBI in the AI era
22:15 Should AI companies or the government lead redistribution?
27:01 Lessons for founders
28:21 Outro
